I don’t know if Trump will do this, but I personally hope that he does.

If Japan and South Korea want our people to stay there and protect them then they have to compensate us for it. Otherwise, they must bear the full cost and responsibility of protecting their own sovereign territory.

“Trump has said some tough things about America’s alliance relationships around the world,” says Robert Kelly, who teaches international relations at South Korea’s Pusan University. “On the other hand, Trump’s also sort of wildly reversed himself. So there’s a lot of uncertainty about what he actually wants to do.”

“I’ll be honest and say I don’t think he really knows himself,” Kelly adds. “I don’t think he really knows a great deal or cares a great deal about foreign affairs.”

-from the article

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We get a great benefit too.

We get to put our military at strategic places around the world giving us presence, practice, and position to stop anything fast. If we are not there a situation could explode and it might be 10 times worse killing 10 times as many Americans by the time we scrambled whatever we needed from half way around the world.

Plus we get the benefit of increased relationships with these nations that we otherwise would not have.

Plus as the article notes some already are paying.

I see the only thing that would happen if we ever did anything so hair brained would be America loses on all fronts.

I don’t agree with all of your points nor do I agree with the article.

The US can easily pressure both South Korea and Japan to pay for the full costs of the US providing for their defense. Since it would cost both Japan and South Korea a considerable amount of money to provide for their own defense (training, equipment, personnel, technology, etc) it would be in their best interest to pay our full costs. If we pulled out immediately, they would be at a strategic disadvantage. Not us. We could relocate military assets needed for rapid deployment to our naval forces who could maintain a presence in international waters.

The fact is we are in a position to re-negotiate the terms of our arrangement. We have no obligation to provide their safety and security…but we can and we will so long as the debt is paid. There should be zero expense to the American taxpayer in this arrangement.

This is a part of the discussion that never seems to make the front page… As is always talked about, 'The US Spends More On Defense Than The Next 10 Countries. In the next head line it reads… “The US Should Be More Like and Provide Services To The Level of European Countries”… and then is the inevitable headline in periodicals of the NYT ilk that “US Defense Spending Is Out Of Control and Must Be Cut” and of course as we have here “It Is The Obligation of and Benefit For The US to Defend and Police The World” (At our own expense)… kind of leaves one scratching their head.

anyplace we leave if we don’t enter someplace else close by or come up with some response to fill that void for real would be a really dumb thing to do. we would be essentially giving up the real estate (which is sovereign American territory) and getting zero for it.

that would really be (fill in the blank with the word of choice).

I cannot imagine anyone would think that a good thing for America security.

The Japanese Constitution has already been amended to allow for more military spending,

That is technically correct. It was amended to allow the Japanese self defense force to assist ally nations in combat, not necessarily to provide for their own defense without US support.

Basically if US goes to war, Japan could help in theory. It was highly contested. One person actually set himself on fire in the middle of Tokyo in protest.

My bet is the Japanese are going to beg Trump to leave our forces in place in exchange for something of value. It could be payments, or it could be something else…but I don’t think there would be such an urgent trip if the Japanese weren’t concerned that Trump would pull the plug.

when we have relatively small nations ho are out gunned in the world to make them forced to pay ransom for protection which will mean ZERO to our budget and just piss everyone off make the small nation feel like a slave…

why would we ever do that???

that just seems so…stupid. what an idiot would do…

rather…keep good relations be PARTNERS and discuss expenses.

but CLEARLY history shows us the reason we are there to begin with is because we HAD a conflict. that resulted in the death of thousands of Americans.

why we would abandon that real estate or worse…bully …a ally is jjust …crazy.

No worries @SteveSPHR I should have added to the end of my post that my prediction could be completely wrong!

But the fact that the Japanese are moving very quickly to meet with the President-elect says to me they are trying to establish a mutually respectful relationship early AND trying to calculate intent. Arriving bearing a “gift” of some sort would not be out of the ordinary for a high ranking Japanese political official.

That gift could be some additional form of payment for security, it could be offering a trade proposal that might be more beneficial to the US than our current arrangements, it could even be more cherry blossoms for Washington, DC.

Spoken like a true European colonialist… they have left the middle east, Africa and parts of Latin America with a legacy of problems.

I love the changing rhetoric that comes from people who supposedly believe in and love the Constitution of our country. For most of my youth the US preached to Russia about a peoples right to self determination even if it wasn’t a choice our nation would make and also preached about the sovereignty of a nation and its right to run its internal affairs.

Only 3 percent of the colonists actually fought in the war of independence… perhaps we realign our thinking and pull back from our world wide Monroe Doctrine before we are overwhelmed with enemies…

I’m with you…I’m pretty sure Trump is a realist in this regard… It’s kind of like people calling Ron Paul a nut because he would ‘end’ so many agencies of the US federal government… what they didn’t pay attention to was that he knew that it might take decades to get it done. Their will be no vacuum in our obligations but their will be some reconsideration of why we do what we do and perhaps some realignment of how we do it.